Handout 16: Deb Curtis
1) On hegemony: the notion (first devised by Antonio Gramsci in the Prison Notebooks)
that a society made up of diverse sociocultural groups and classes can be dominated by
one of its groups/classes. This dominance is achieved when the ideas/values of the
dominating class are seen as the norm – as the right and the proper – as, almost, a
universal ideology which benefits everyone. This is to say, the ideas/values of the
dominating class are seen as benefitting all, when they really benefit only members of the
ruling class.
2) On a “discourse of power”: A phrase associated with the world of Michel Foucault. In a
number of brilliantly documented studies after 1961, Foucault analyzed the ways in
which apparently objective and natural structures in society, which privilege some and
punish others for non-conformity, are in fact "discourses of power." Studies like
Madness and Civilization (1961), The Order of Things (1966), The Birth of the Clinic
(1973), and above all, Discipline and Punish (1975) elicit the various modes in which the
subject is objectified according to the ruling interests of his or her society.
Objectification of the subject can take various forms, perhaps the most dramatic being
what Foucault calls "dividing practices," the example he gives in 1961 being the isolation
of the mad in the very asylums which once housed the lepers; or the way that the
criminal, who was tortured to death as a public entertainment in the 18th century, was
numbed into conformity by solitary confinement in the 19th century, to become at last the
the object of medical and psychiatric and psychoanalytic expertise in the 20th century,
when all guilt has been internalized the patient is imprisoned in himself. A second mode
of objectification comes through the classifications and reifications of science and
scientific discourse (Words and Things, 1966). Finally, in his recent work on the History
of Sexuality, for instance, Foucault studies the way the subject, trying to come to terms
with the dominant power structures in his society, attempts to create a meaningful
identity for himself. In all this, Foucault's main attention is not so much on the historical
facts and contours themselves (though these are impressively vast) but on the discourse
which Foucault detects as the real power behind the actual forms of domination.
Discursive practices are characterized by the delimitation of a field of objects, the
definition of a legitimate perspective for the agent of knowledge, and the fixing of norms
for the elaboration of concepts and theories. Thus, each discursive practice implies a play
of prescriptions that designate its exclusions and choices (Foucault, 1977, Language,
Counter-Memory, Practice). [Discursive procedures] regulate who may speak and who
may not -- who is conversationally qualified, and who is disqualified... Power, if it is not
in anybody's "hands," is at least in their mouths. Some of these mouths speak; others
remain silent, some are perceived to articulate truths; some utter falsehoods. The
knowledge statements of some circulate and are clearly heard; others vanish into power's
hush (Knowledge and Power in a South Pacific Society, pp 19-20).
3) On structure and agency: consciousness is never fully colonized (John and Jean
Comaroff in Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 1: Christianity, Colonialism, and
Consciousness in South Africa).
4) On sexuality as invented: Judith Butler (Gender Trouble) would call it as performative;
as scripted – which doesn’t mean that it does not become embodied. Sex, gender identity,
gender role and social identity (including behaviors or appearance) and sexual orientation
are seen in a Western gender schemas as naturally linked, but they actually are only
culturally linked.
5) On commodity erotics and modernity (when one lives in “the last corner).
6) On the contradictions of capitalism: fetching water or watching pornography.
7) On ethics in anthropology as seen by anthropologist, Rena Lederman, from an interview
with her entititled “Anthropologist observes native academics in their natural habitat” in
News at Princeton, March 23, 2006.
“Fieldwork is all about serendipity and seizing unexpected opportunities,” [Prof. Rena
Lederman] said. One of her colleagues, she remarked, refers to the method anthropologists
use for gathering information as “deep hanging out.”
“One striking difference in the background assumptions of anthropology and neighboring
disciplines is the use of deception or intimacy as research tools, said Lederman. For
example, cultural anthropologists and social psychologists agree that valid results ought to be
based on observing realistic social interaction; however, their methods for getting those
results differ dramatically.
Valid social psychological research aims for “experimental realism”: Research conditions
need to be controlled but the behavior of research subjects needs to be realistic nevertheless.
A standard technique for achieving experimental realism is to devise ingenious modes of
deceiving participants about the true nature of what is being studied, after which those
participants must be properly “debriefed.” An example is a scenario in which volunteers
interact with other people they believe are also volunteers while waiting to be called in to
participate in a psychology experiment. In fact, their interaction in the waiting room actually
involves the psychologist’s confederates and is the experiment the psychologist is observing.
Cultural anthropologists do not generally use experimentation and the deceptions it
sometimes requires. “Social psychologists may look askance at anthropologists’ conventional
methods,” Lederman said. “Fieldwork involves uncontrolled social encounters. We go
wherever people live and work, describe our research interests in terms that we hope will
engage our interlocutors’ own concerns, and do our best to learn from them by remaining
deeply involved for quite a while. Many of us end fieldwork with a very different project
than the one with which we began.”